Top Retailers in India

Nowadays, consumer in India wants the right price, ambience and good quality all under one roof. With the rapidly changing lifestyle and growing income of consumers, the retail industry has shown good growth rates in India. According to a report on Indian Retail Industry, it is estimated that organised retail in India will cross the $650-billion mark by 2011, with an already estimated investment of around $421 billion slated for the next four years. Also, the report says that the organized retail penetration (ORP) is the highest in footwear with 22 per cent followed by clothing. Though food and grocery account for largest share of retail spend by the consumer at about 76 per cent, only 1 percent of this market is in the organized sector.

Some of the leading players in organised retail market:

1. Pantaloon Retail

The flagship company of Future Group, Pantaloons Retail operates over 16 million square feet of retail space, has over 1000 stores across 73 cities in India and employs over 30,000 people. It can boast of launching the first hypermarket Big Bazaar in India in 2001. The companies also operates in other retail segments such as - Food & grocery (Big bazaar, Food bazaar), Home solutions (Hometown, furniture bazaar, collection-i), consumer electronics (e-zone), shoes (shoe factory), Books: music & gifts (Depot), Health & Beauty care services (Star, Sitara andHealth village in the pipeline), e-tailing (Futurbazaar.com), entertainment (Bowling co.) The turnover this year was 12500 crores.

2. K Raheja Group

They forayed into retail with Shopper’s Stop, India’s first departmental store in 2001. It is the only retailer from India to become a member of the prestigious Intercontinental Group of Departmental Stores (IGDS). They have signed a 50:50 joint venture with the Nuance Group for Airport Retailing. Shoppers Stop has a national presence, with over 2.05 million square feet area across 39 stores in 17 cities. It has also introduced new formats in the market viz HomeStop – the exclusive home furnishings, décor as well  as furniture store and HyperCity– a premium shopping destination for Foods, Homeware, Home Entertainment, Hi-Tech Appliances, Furniture, Sports, Toys & Fashion. Other format of the company includes -- Crossword Book Store, Mothercare & Early Learning Centre (ELC), Estee Lauder group , Airport Retailing, TimeZone Entertainment. The turnover this year was 1570 crores.

3. Tata group

Established in 1998, Trent - one of the subsidiaries of Tata Group - operates Westside, a lifestyle retail chain and Star India Bazaar - a hypermarket with a large assortment of products at the lowest prices. In 2005, it acquired Landmark, India's largest book and music retailer. Tata’s has also formed a subsidiary named Infiniti retail which consists of Croma, a consumer electronics chain. Another subsidiary, Titan Industries, owns brands like “Titan”, the watch of India and Tanishq, the jewellery brand. Sales turover was 197.13 crore in December 2010.

4. RPG group

One of the first entrants into organised food & grocery retail with Foodworld stores in 1996 and then formed an alliance with Dairy farm International and launched health & glow (pharmacy & beauty care) outlets. Now the alliance has dissolved and RPG has Spencer’s Hyper, Super, Daily and Express formats and Music World stores across the country.

5. Landmark group

Landmark Group was launched in 1998 in India; currently owning 100 stores across various retail formats. The retail ventures of Landmark Group includes - Home Centre, Centrepoint, Babyshop, Splash, Shoe Mart, Lifestyle, Max, Lifestyle Department Stores, SPAR hypermarkets, Foodmark, Fun City, Fitness First, Citymax India etc. It is a 3.8 billion dollar company.

6. Bharti-Walmart

Bharti have signed a 50:50 percent joint venture agreement with Walmart’ in which Wal-Mart will be taking care of cash & carry and Bharti will do the front-end. Further they plan to invest US$ 7 bn in creating retail network in the country including 100 hypermarkets and several hundred small stores.

7. Reliance

The company owns more than 560 Reliance Fresh stores and recently it has also launched Reliance Mart Hypermart. The company further plans to launch its hypermart in Delhi / NCR, Hyderabad, Vijaywada, Pune and Ludhiana region. The turnover was 4500 crore for this year.

8. AV Birla Group's brand portfolio includes brands such as Louis Phillipe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Peter England, Trouser town. Also, Madura garments is subsidiary of Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. The recently acquired food and grocery chain of south, Trineth, has further increased their number of store to 400 stores in the country. The company also own ‘More’ supermarkets and hypermarkets. Currently it runs 600 supermarket and nine hypermarkets across India. The turnover this year was 1700 crores.

9. Metro

Metro Cash & Carry, the first company to introduce cash and carry business, started its operations in India in 2003 with two Distribution Centres in Bangalore. Metro offers assortment of over 18000 articles across food and non food at the best wholesale prices. Currently Metro operates six cash and carry centres in Banglaore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai.

10. Viveks Ltd

Vivek Limited is the largest consumer electronics and home appliances retail chain in India, with 44 stores in south, covering a retail space area of over 1, 75, 000 sq. ft and a turnover of over Rs. 400 crore. Its brand, Viveks, is now a household name. The company plans to set up 50 more showrooms in South India.